Would You Put This Man In A Leadership Position?

Posted on by

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about Representative Keith Ellison, currently being considered to lead the Democratic Party. The article cites a number of articles written by Ellison while he was a law student at the University of Minnesota. He wrote the articles under the name of Keith E. Hakim.

In one article Representative Ellison wrote:

“Racism means conspiracy to subjugate and actual subjugation. That means planned social, economic, military, religious and political subjugation of whites. It cannot be intelligently argued that the Nation of Islam is doing this. In fact, blacks have no history of harming or subjecting whites as a class. On the other hand, whites have it written into their very Constitution that blacks shall be considered three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation of their white owners. Their Constitution also makes provisions for the return of runaway slaves. Their constitution is the bedrock of American law; it’s the best evidence of a white racist conspiracy to subjugate other peoples.”

Obviously, counting slaves as 3/5 a person was not the right thing to do. However, you need to look at that decision in its proper frame of reference. First of all, slavery was an accepted world-wide practice. Generally it was Muslims who captured the slaves and brought them to America. Muslims also enslaved white sailors taken from boats they captured. England and America were the countries that worked to end slavery. Slavery is still legal today in some Muslim countries. Second of all, the 3/5 provision was a result of the northern states fearing that if the slaves in the south were properly counted, the south would be over-represented in Congress. Ironically, had the 3/5 rule not been in place, it might have been much more difficult to make the small inroads against slavery that Congress made. Thirdly, that rule was superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.The Constitution is not racist–in its time, it was the first document to declare that man had certain inalienable rights that came from God. For a law student, Representative Ellison sure has a jaded view of American history.
The article includes another excerpt from another article by Keith E. Hakim:

“Since no one but the WASP elite really appreciates affirmative action, I have a challenge for all fair-minded middle- and working-class white people: I will urge black people to abandon white-dominated, integration-oriented, give-away programs, if you urge white people to justly compensate black people for 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow and 25 years of neo-Jim Crow.

The settlement could be a straight cash transfer for all the black exploitation. This means just compensation for all the labor hours put in by the slaves and just compensation for all the intellectual and artistic property ripped off by all the Elvis Presleys and Pat Boones. It means compensation for all the money ripped off through sharecropping and just compensation owing to all the black athletes of yesterday, such as Jack Jefferson and Joe Louis. It means back payment of the ‘black tax,’ which is the price hike that ghetto merchants and pawnbrokers charge black consumers.”

I have no problem going after the people who profited by exploitation–regardless of the race of the person exploited. However, most of the people walking around today had nothing to do with the complaints this man is making. I believe there have been successful lawsuits involving the intellectual and artistic property he mentions. Therefore it has been settled legally. As far as the ‘black tax’ referred to, wouldn’t it make sense to seek compensation from those merchants who are imposing the tax?

The sort of thinking represented in these articles does not bring people together and does not solve problems–it creates division and class envy. Is this the man you want leading the Democratic Party?